Golden Filly Collection One (17 page)
“Good luck.” Trish waved to the rider as she released the lead. All the instructions had already been given. Trish felt a stir of pride as Gatesby walked easily into the starting gate.
He broke clean at the clang of the gates, his jockey keeping him free of the pack as they rounded the first turn. In this race for maiden colts, he was easy to spot, running slightly to the front. By the fourth furlong, it was obviously a race between Gatesby and a sorrel.
“And they’re neck and neck,” the announcer intoned. “Numbers five and seven. And they’re in the backstretch, ladies and gentlemen.”
“Go, Gatesby!” Trish shrieked from her position high on Dan’l’s back. Rhonda’s shouts joined Trish’s from her spot by Dan’l’s shoulder. David handed her his binoculars. “Five to win. Come on Gatesby.” They chanted in chorus. At the last length, the sorrel surged ahead to win by a nose.
“Oh no,” Trish moaned along with a good part of the crowd.
“For pete’s sake, Tee, he placed, didn’t he?” David smacked her on the knee. “That’s fantastic! See what a good job you did with him?”
“If you’d been on him, he’d have won,” Rhonda said when Trish dismounted and they led Dan’l back to his stall. “Genie may be a good rider, but you know Gatesby.”
Trish and David were washing the steaming horse down by the time their father and the Andersons arrived at the stables.
“You’ve done a fine job with him.” John Anderson shook Trish’s hand.
“Thank you.” Trish grinned up at him. “But it was all of us. We’re a team, Dad, David, and I. Oh, and Brad and Rhonda too.” She tapped Brad’s shoulder as he wielded the scraper. “Besides, Gatesby’s a good horse.”
“Good and mean.” Anderson kept a safe distance from Gatesby’s head. “He tried taking a hunk out of me when he was just a little thing.”
They all laughed, since each of them had been nipped at one time or another.
“How about you up on him the next time he’s out?” Anderson tapped his program on Trish’s shoulder. “You trained him, you ride him. Even though the silks will be blue and white instead of crimson and gold. Think that’d be a problem for you?”
“No, sir.” Trish shook her head. “No problem at all.”
“I’ll pay you the standard percentage, of course.”
Trish fought to wipe the grin from her face. “That’ll be great. Thank you.”
“Good for you,” her father whispered in her ear as he left with the visitors. “See you at home.”
Trish caught the look on her mother’s face. Both worry and sadness creased her forehead.
Be happy for me, Mom, will you please?
Trish wished she could have said the words out loud.
Trish ignored the uneasiness she felt around her mother and embraced the thrill of future mounts to herself as she finished helping with the cleanup. She was on her way to being a professional. Her first mount on a paying basis. The only cloud on her horizon was the gray of her father’s face. He looked totally exhausted.
Hal couldn’t make it to the dinner table that night, so the family carried dinner to him. He was propped up on pillows, and the pallor of his face matched the pillowcases, but his smile brightened the room. David parked his TV tray in front of the rocking chair in the corner and Marge pulled up the ottoman.
Hal patted the bed beside him. “Here, Tee. You sit here.”
Trish propped pillows against the headboard and wriggled herself into a comfortable position, her tray balanced on her knees. The play-byplay rehash of the day, even though in a different setting than the usual, was the perfect end to an almost-perfect day.
That is, until the others left the room and her father said, “Trish, we have to talk.”
I
n a puff the glow left the room.
Trish stalled for time. “Let me go to the bathroom first.” She slipped off the bed. “I’ll be right back.”
She stalled longer, washing her hands, brushing her teeth, and combing her hair. When she finally returned to the bedroom, her father was slumped against the pillows—sound asleep.
“Good night, Dad,” Trish whispered as she shut off the light.
The next afternoon when they returned from church, Hal remained in the front passenger seat. “Come on, Tee. Show me how your driving’s improved. Don’t rush lunch,” he said to Marge as she got out of the car.
“When do you plan to take your test?” he asked Trish as she pulled the car out onto the main road.
“I don’t know. When do I have the time?” Trish settled back and relaxed. She loved to drive.
“Probably not this week.” Hal rubbed his hand across his face. “Why don’t you make an appointment for next Thursday?”
“I have to take the written first, before they’ll even schedule my driving test.”
“Okay, then plan for the written that day. Are you studied up for it?”
“I think I have the book memorized.” Trish flashed a grin at her dad.
“Rhonda and I quiz each other.”
“Good. Let’s stop and get a milk shake at the Dairy Queen and go on out to Lewisville Park.”
Trish nodded. She loved the drive to Battle Ground. On a day like today, decapitated Mount St. Helens stood sentinel against the clear blue sky. Vine maple ran rampant up the banks along the road, already flashing vermillion and burgundy.
“Two chocolate, then?” she asked as she stopped the car.
“Yeah. Make it malts.”
They pulled into a secluded parking area, easy to find since few picnickers were out this late in the year. For a few minutes the only break in the silence was the slurp of milk shake through their straws.
“How much has your mother told you about my condition?” her father finally asked.
“Not a lot.” Trish stirred her shake with the straw.
“Well, the good news is the radiation is shrinking the tumors.”
“How much?”
“I couldn’t see the difference, but the doctor assured me he saw progress. I keep picturing my lungs healthy, and claiming God’s love and healing.”
“But David…the doctor said…but what if you die? How would
that
show God’s love?” Trish stammered over the words.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? Aren’t you mad? Don’t you want to live?”
“Of course. And yes, I have been angry. Angry that this could happen to me. Furious that I kept on smoking even when I knew it was wrong and bad for my health.” His sigh came from the pain deep within. “I blamed myself, blamed God, blamed the doctors for not making me well right away.”
“But you’ve always said God can do anything.”
“He can.”
“And that He loves us.”
“He does.”
“But what if you die?” Trish gripped the steering wheel like she’d tear it off the column. “How does that show God’s love?”
Her father rubbed her shoulder with the hand he’d draped over the back of the seat. “There are no easy answers, Tee. If I die, I get to go home to heaven. I’m with Him then. If I live, I get to stay home with you. Then He’s with me. Either way, I’m—we’re in His care.”
“But I need you here.” The cry tore from her heart.
“I know.” His voice softened. “I know. And that’s my choice too.” He gathered her close.
Trish could hear the wheezing as she leaned her head on his chest.
God,
she smothered the thought deep inside her.
If you let my dad die, I swear I’ll hate you forever.
“But, you see, it’s not God’s fault.” Her father had been reading her mind again.
“Then whose fault is it?”
“Sickness isn’t anyone’s fault. It just exists as long as we’re on this earth.”
“But…” Trish couldn’t put her thoughts into words. “I hate cancer.”
“So do I.”
Trish stared at the container in her hands. “I told God that I hate Him,” she whispered.
“I’m sure He understands. He knows our feelings better than we do.”
“But—”
“He forgives you, Tee. And He’ll never let you go. No matter how much hate and anger you have, He’ll take care of it—and you.”
“Thanks, Dad.” The silence echoed in Trish’s thoughts. She looked through the windshield, her gaze focused somewhere beyond the drooping cedar trees. “You always said God answers prayer.”
“He does.”
“I’ve been praying for you to get better.”
“So have I. And a lot of other people. You heard Pastor Mort in church this morning.”
Trish didn’t answer. She’d been careful not to hear much of the service.
“Tee, whichever way it goes, remember that I love you. You’ll never know how thankful I’ve been for the times we’ve spent together. No man could be prouder of his daughter than I am of you.”
Trish let the tears flow. Great sobs shook her entire body as she clung to the father she adored. Tears fell from his eyes too, but he managed to keep from coughing.
When the emotional storm passed, they dried their eyes and attempted to smile. Trish sat up straight and dropped her head on her hands against the steering wheel.
“I still have a hard time seeing that God loves us through all this.” Trish turned the key to start the engine.
Her father stayed her hand. “Tee, I’ve lived my whole life knowing that I am His and He is mine. Why would that change now? I need Him more than ever.”
“And I need you.”
“I know.” He let her turn the key. “But remember that death isn’t the end of life.”
Trish drove home carefully, her mind a whirlwind of her father’s comments.
On Monday Trish got to sleep in, and woke to find another card on her desk. This one said
“Do not be afraid—I am with you! I am your God—let nothing terrify you! I will make you strong and help you; I will protect you and save you” (Isaiah 41:10).
She tacked it up above the other one.
How,
she wondered.
How will He do all that?
David spent Monday and Tuesday evenings coaching her on her chemistry, and his explanations made sense.
“You really like this stuff, don’t you?” Trish stared at David as if he were some strange creature from outer space.
“Sure.” David scrunched the pillows up behind him against the headboard. “Math and chemistry are orderly—the equations remain the same, if you do them right.”
“Yeah, right.”
“And yet there are all kinds of realms to explore, like medicine, for instance.”
“Well, since I have no desire to work in medicine or math…”
“Besides that, it’s good discipline for your mind. You work out to develop your muscles, right?”
“Of course.”
“Well, consider this information as a workout for your mind.”
“Whether I like it or not, right?” Trish flipped the pages of her chemistry book back and forth. “Do you think Dad’s getting weaker?”
David didn’t answer her.
Trish raised her head in time to see and hear her brother draw a ragged breath that seemed to catch on something in his throat.
“Well?” Trish hated the silence filling the room. She knew if David disagreed, he’d have said so immediately.
“Tee.” David swung his feet to the floor, but slumped rather than standing up. “That’s part of the disease. Dad said the treatments were about as bad as the cancer. They both make him weak.”
“I feel like crying all the time. I hate it.” Trish slammed her book shut. “I just hate it!”
“I know.”
“You too?”
David nodded.
“But you don’t…I mean, well…” Trish met her brother’s gaze. The pain she saw mirrored her own. But being of a different nature, he suffered in silence.
